Delays in hip operations lead to deaths among elderly, say surgeons

Elderly people who suffer broken hips are being forced to wait a dangerously long time for operations, according to leading surgeons.

Delays in treatment mean some older patients fail to regain full mobility, lose their independence and end up in a nursing home, senior doctors claim. In extreme cases patients suffer an early death. A survey by the British Orthopaedic Association, which represents most of the UK's 2,000 surgeons who repair joints, reveals that senior citizens have to wait too long for the surgery they need to give them the best chance of recovery.

Although the BOA recommends that at least 95 per cent of hip-fracture victims should have surgery within 48 hours, more than half the senior trauma surgeons it questioned said their unit could not do that. One in five patients have to wait longer than two days, they say. Around 70,000 people aged 60 or over break a hip every year, of whom about 80% are women. Numbers are growing because of the ageing population and rising osteoporosis levels. The fractures cost the NHS an estimated £1.8bn a year to treat.

"These patients are let down by the NHS," Clare Marx, the BOA president, told the Observer. "They are wrongly viewed as patients who can wait, whereas in reality they are surgical emergencies who are in pain and whose future life and rehabilitation depends on receiving prompt, effective treatment, especially surgery. But too many receive care that you wouldn't want your parent or grandparent to have. Those who have to wait for surgery can end up in a downward spiral which goes from frailty, to them being extremely unwell, to sometimes early death."

In the BOA poll, 80 per cent of the 124 heads of trauma at hospitals across the UK said a failure to operate within 48 hours increased a patient's chances of dying. Respondents blamed the delays on inadequate operating theatre time for such cases, a shortage of ortho-geriatric specialists, and hospital managements' failure to take hip fractures in the elderly seriously enough.

Pamela Holmes, head of healthy ageing at the charity Help The Aged, said: "This is pretty shaming for our country and for the NHS. This is a form of neglect of older people."

A Department of Health spokesman said: "While there are no national targets for the treatment of hip fractures, we expect clinicians to ensure that patients are provided with high-quality, timely care which takes into account clinical guidance issued by professional organisations."